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My WPI Education

The Impact of My WPI Education on My Teaching

Through Pedagogy Coursework...

The parts of this coursework leading into the practicum included:

  • My pre-practicum, where I ran a bridge-building activity with a peer in the Teacher Preparation Program,

  • The Teaching Methods in Mathematics and Science class, where I learned many pedagogical techniques and the structures, systems, and curriculum of teaching in Massachusetts, and

  • An internship at a local engineering summer camp, where I learned my love of teaching and how to encourage participation without motivators like grades.

Through STEM Coursework...

Robotics

As my original major, the core of my classwork at WPI involves my time in Robotics classes, which was valuable in my first student teaching placement, Clinton Senior High School, for designing curriculum for a 10-week unit in Robotics. ​

General Engineering

Within the context of this teaching practicum, general engineering classes are non-Robotics classes that were required when I was pursuing a degree in Robotics, but also involve content knowledge in related fields to what I was teaching, such as Statics being related to Civil Engineering and Digital Circuit Design being related to Digital Electronics.​ Other examples of this classwork include Engineering Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Introduction to Program Design, and Control Engineering I.

STEM-Adjacent

Beyond engineering classes, I had STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) coursework on content which is often integrated into Engineering topics. ​The core example of this coursework are my two General Physics classes: Mechanics, and Electricity and Magnetism.

Through Psychology...

Many Psychology classes I have taken at WPI involved topics that aided in what could be viewed as "soft skills" in teaching, such as: Teacher-student relationships, classroom management, and content design. Examples of these classes include Social Psychology, The Psychology of Education, and School Psychology. ​

How My Experiences in Project-Based Learning Impacted My Teaching

 

Understanding the Difference Between
Discovery Learning and
Project-Based Learning

My experiences with Project-Based Learning have given me a diverse range of experiences to draw from to design meaningful project-based activities through deliberate practice over discovery learning. Project-Based Learning draws benefits from how it can be designed to allow students ways of interacting with topics that they can connect to the real world with; However, misunderstandings in how to implement it can result in...

  • Discovery Learning, where students will struggle to recognize connections between content areas that aren't made explicit (4), or

  • Result in lacking the element of unique and personalized exploration, where the predefined result has an exact answer; In these cases, students become focused on getting the right answer, rather than learning how everything around the answer connects.

First-Hand Experience in How to Make Project-Based Learning Successful

Projects can be used to make content relevant through providing a space for students to cultivate results that are meaningful to their life or interests.

An example of this can be seen in a project I instructed involving keychain charms, as it involved freedom in design choices, providing students with the opportunity to express their creativity and personal interests. 

 

Projects can be used to make content applicable and relevant through a tangible result.

To cite the charm example again, the project involved application of CAD and 3D-Printing skills to design the charms, displaying the utility of the class' content. 

 

Projects can be used to make connections between the content examples and real-world scenarios. This furthers the benefit of making the content applicable, as well as encouraging the development of career skills. 

To finish the charm example, the project revolved around client-designer interactions, displaying the content through the use of a real-world scenario. Client communication and satisfaction was necessary in the project, making course content become not only applicable beyond the classroom, but also become a tool through which students practice these important career skills.

 

More on the project used here as an example can be found under "Charmed, I'm Sure" in Instructional Materials

Citations

  1. Chester, M. D. (2014, November). Building on 20 year of Massachusetts Education Reform. Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Retrieved 2022, from https://www.doe.mass.edu/commissioner/BuildingOnReform.pdf

  2. Chieppo, C., & Gass, J. (2021, February 15). How Massachusetts Showed the Way on Education Reform. Pioneer Institute. Retrieved 2022, from https://pioneerinstitute.org/common_core/how-massachusetts-showed-the-way-on-education-reform/

  3. Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). U.S. Department of Education. (n.d.). Retrieved 2022, from https://www.ed.gov/essa?src=rn

  4. Fries, L., Son, J.Y., Givvin, K.B. et al. (2020, August 17). Practicing Connections: A Framework to Guide Instructional Design for Developing Understanding in Complex Domains. Educ Psychol Rev 33, 739–762 (2021). Retrieved 2023, from https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-020-09561-x

 
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